Word: dullness
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...likes of Ma Rainey and Cab Calloway. Doc 's 91. The tunes here are standards, many of them--like Black and Blue--part of Louis Armstrong's repertoire; all are played in a straight-ahead New Orleans style. But one's suspicion that the result might be dutiful and dull, the musical equivalent of a five-part series in the New York Times on wage stagnation, proves groundless. Doc Cheatham & Nicholas Payton rescues its idiom from both the dead end of strict revivalism and the cornier precincts of Dixieland, reinvesting it with swing and individuality and reminding us why this...
...Calloway. Doc ?s 91. The tunes here, writes TIME?s Bruce Handy, are standards, many of them -- like Black and Blue -- part of Louis Armstrong?s repertoire; all are played in a straight-ahead New Orleans style. But one?s suspicion that the result might be dutiful and dull, the musical equivalent of a five-part series in the New York Times on wage stagnation, proves groundless. ?Doc Cheatham & Nicholas Payton? rescues its idiom from both the dead end of strict revivalism and the cornier precincts of Dixieland, reinvesting it with swing and individuality and reminding us why this sensual...
...band's laudably gritty feminist outlook isn't more creatively realized, however. Many of the songs on Dig Me Out feature lyrics that are either too abstract to have much impact or too obvious to have much poetic resonance. The dull Heart Factory, for example, is about--duh--a factory that makes hearts: "Now you can program how you feel before you walk out the door." It doesn't take Deep Blue to figure out that that metaphorical construct is a yawner...
...tribute to Brahms opened with his Tragic Overture in D minor, Op. 81. Though not one of Brahms' most widely played pieces, the overture is by no means dull, beginning with two dramatic chords and followed by the full statement of the main theme. The piece fluctuates between extremes in dynamics, tempo and mood, immediately placing it in the Romantic period...
...blood lust, religious mania, governmental terrorism and most other sources of human misery. But the author's predominant diagnosis of what went wrong, on all sides and without letup, is that stupidity ruled--quite literally in the case of the last Czar, Nicholas II (who comes across here as dull-minded and weak), and his wife Alexandra (dull-minded and forceful). At a time when Russia might have been transformed by shrewd and humane reforms into a parliamentary democracy with a figurehead monarch (a role that would have suited a Czar whose only talent was that...